Transitioning Purposefully – The (Semi) Weekly Update

We receive compensation for some links on this blog and are always grateful if you use these links to support our content. Any opinions expressed in this post are our own, and have not been reviewed, approved, sponsored, or endorsed by our advertising partners unless otherwise specifically noted.Check out our 5 Travel Amenities to Bring Home After Your Next Trip.

Today in the middle of a yoga class, I sat down on my mat and started crying.

Big wet tears running down my face, my body was overriding my brain.

I don’t like crying in public. I don’t mind crying – it can be cathartic – but I don’t like crying in front of other people. Its more vulnerability than I like to show. But if I’m going to cry outside the cloak of privacy, it might as well be in front of virtual strangers.

I was frustrated. In yoga, there are sometimes difficult days and I was having one. My body didn’t want to cooperate in several postures (my damned feet again) and the direction of the class had me inadvertently at the front of the room for a series of poses. I felt the pressure to be perfect (I know, I know!) and when I couldn’t be, I needed to drop down and get re-centered. And then the waterworks came.

I don’t think it was the yoga class as much it was everything lately. I vacated my office space this week (today was the last day of moving things out) and closed the door on an era of running my own firm for the last ten years. I pushed out two major deliverables for the old firm (both first-time clients) and one at the new firm in the last two weeks. And in the middle of all of it, I flew 20 segments in two weeks – and did four client presentations, a conference, a visit to the Pan Am Experience, and a mileage run to China. Oh, and it flooded at home. A lot. I have (more) property damage. And I have worked my ass off to acclimate to a new position. Among it aI’ve been adjusting to a few lifestyle changes (my schedule, my diet, my finances) – most of them very positive, but still a large number of changes!

Its no wonder there were tears. My body was, on the mat, expressing what my brain was thinking… so much expectation and I wasn’t hitting my own standard of perfection.

But yesterday, I had a great yoga class. And something the instructor said during that class (a restorative Vinyasa one), resonated with me – “we must move purposefully through our transitions”.

We must move purposefully through our transitions.

While the context was the flow from one yoga posture to another, it couldn’t have spoken more clearly to me in my current state.

I haven’t been writing because I’ve been overwhelmed with the need to be perfect – to write about a specific topic, to get a project out before taking a few minutes for myself, to meet my obligations without regard for balance.

It has to stop.

I need to re-center my quest for perfection into being the best version of myself while allowing for the realities of my life to be a consideration. And that also means I need to write, even if its just a tiny bit, to keep that outlet for my sanity.

My travel this week is four more segments and a couple more hotel nights – a minor week compared to the previous ones. I’m hoping to enjoy some downtime at home – more yoga (hopefully without tears), dinners with friends, and I’m definitely excited about Entourage (the movie) premiering this week! I am trying not to think about my living room/dining room (both stacked 3 feet high with boxed from my own office that I need to find space for) or my driveway (which needs to be replaced after the last two years’ cycle of floods and ice storms).

I owe my readers write ups on SO many things… like my trip back in time to the early 70s at the Pan Am Experience (you can see my vintage hair in the photo below). Or my adventures in Beijing (on what some are calling the last of the great mileage runs). And my hotel room key stash reached new epic proportions (I think I’m at least 40 hotels behind in my reviews at this point!)

*sigh* But no pressure. Everything will come at the right pace.

Transitioning purposefully.

That’s what I’ll be doing to maintain my center. And hopefully to avoid any more tears on my yoga mat.

Jennifer is a management consultant and avid volunteer. Her career and volunteer duty travels have helped her log top-tier airline and hotel status annually for the last eighteen years. In addition, she embraces the opportunity to maximize her vacation time by planning extracurricular trips that have taken her to over 60 countries and 48.5 US states. Although she averages 200 days a year on the road, she loves to return to “the homestead” in her native Fort Worth, Texas where she enjoys cooking, gardening, sewing, needlepoint, wine, and cocktail mixology.